Customer Reviews

Managing New Industry Creation: Global Knowledge Formation and Entrepreneurship in High Technology

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"Managing New Industry Creation" by Murtha, Lenway and Hart is a narrative not unlike the Search for the Holy Grail or the Golden Fleece, but with an important twist: Flat Panel Displays were found. It is a very well-researched academic work written in a strange language, readable English. The typeface is clear and nicely-leaded for easy reading.

The authors' analysis of the history of the flat panel industry becomes a metaphor and an outline for profitable development of emerging industries. Opportunities, problems, disappointments and successes are well-documented. The importance of cooperation with suppliers, competitors and even other cultures is completely noted. Historically taboo management techniques are shown to be necessary when working with industry development.

This book is a must-read for all levels of corporate managers involved in industry creation.

"Managing New Industry Creation" mines a richly detailed case study to provide critical insights into how knowledge creation and management are the key to global competitive success. The book provides a blueprint on how to create and sustain advantage by leveraging core competencies through global alliances and markets. Murtha, Lenway, and Hart distill extensive fieldwork in the flat panel display industry through the lens of their strategic management expertise to produce a timely read for executives and researchers.

This book is the only work I know of which accurately recounts the rise of the flat panel industry and captures the key factors which separated the eventual winners from the rest of the participants. The authors clearly spent a great deal of time interviewing and reinterviewing the key players all around the world, and were able to develop an understanding of this industry which far surpasses the somewhat parochial and simplistic viewpoint we often hear in the U.S.
There are many lessons to be learned from the emergence of the flat panel industry (particularly in the U.S.) and this book does a very good job of extracting them from a wealth of insightful observations.

This book is well-written and gives important insights into competitive and cooperative strategies in areas of rapid technological change. It gives a more insightful analysis than available anywhere else, with quite a bit of applicability to current technological decision making.

This book takes a detailed look at the development of Flat Panel Displays and the enormously complex and expensive developments (in science, technology, manufacturing and manufacturing equipment) needed for them. Based on extensive field interviews in the US and Japan, the authors show that no company could have developed the technologies required alone. Instead, a collaborative community of practice of suppliers, manufacturers, scientists, and users had to coalesce, and did, in Japan. Nevertheless, some US firms were critical players: those that collaborated and participated in Japan. This book forces us to rethink simple-minded notions of how and where technology can develop, with profound implications for managing strategy, making trade policy, and understanding increasingly complex high tech strategy.

An accessible and insightful examination of the flat panel display industry from its inception to 2000. Murtha, Lenway and Hart make two broad contributions. First, they refute many of the myths that surround the flat panel display industry. Second, they generate insights that are applicable to any technologically innovative industry. The book will be valuable to managers, policy makers and academics. Highly recommended.

Glenn Hoetker, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This book is written in a scholarly style, and is rather laborious reading. Additionally, it lacks predictive validity and has been unable to predict any of the momentous changes in the flat-display sector that have occurred in the last year. Dated!

This book gives a good overview of the Flat Panel sector; it may provide a good academic case study. However, as a manager, I was also looking for advice that I could apply now. This sector has been characterized by intense competition and turbulence, especially as regards international competition. Murtha et al. provide hackneyed insights and many of their predictions and "insights" are wrong. Disappointing!